Death by Landscape

Death by Landscape

Author: Elvia Wilk

Publisher: Catapult

Published: 2022-07-19

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 1593767161

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From the acclaimed author of the novel Oval comes a book of “fan nonfiction” about living and writing in the age of extinction In this constellation of essays, Elvia Wilk asks what kinds of narratives will help us rethink our human perspective toward Earth. The book begins as an exploration of the role of fiction today and becomes a deep interrogation of the writing process and the self. Wilk examines creative works across time and genre in order to break down binaries between dystopia and utopia, real and imagined, self and world. She makes connections between works by such wide-ranging writers as Mark Fisher, Karen Russell, Han Kang, Doris Lessing, Anne Carson, Octavia E. Butler, Michelle Tea, Helen Phillips, Kathe Koja, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, and Hildegard von Bingen. What happens when research becomes personal, when the observer breaks through the glass? Through the eye of the fan, this collection delves into literal and literary world-building projects—medieval monasteries, solarpunk futures, vampire role plays, environments devoid of humans—bridging the micro and the macro and revealing how our relationship to narrative shapes our relationships to the natural world and to one another.


Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death

Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death

Author: Otto Dov Kulka

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2013-01-31

Total Pages: 138

ISBN-13: 0718197011

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Otto Dov Kulka's memoir of a childhood spent in Auschwitz is a literary feat of astounding emotional power, exploring the permanent and indelible marks left by the Holocaust Winner of the JEWISH QUARTERLY-WINGATE PRIZE 2014 As a child, the distinguished historian Otto Dov Kulka was sent first to the ghetto of Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz. As one of the few survivors he has spent much of his life studying Nazism and the Holocaust, but always as a discipline requiring the greatest coldness and objectivity, with his personal story set to one side. But he has remained haunted by specific memories and images, thoughts he has been unable to shake off. Translated by Ralph Mandel. 'The greatest book on Auschwitz since Primo Levi ... Kulka has achieved the impossible' - the panel of Judges, Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize


Heritage of Death

Heritage of Death

Author: Mattias Frihammar

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-11-28

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 1315440180

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Today, death is being reconceptualised around the world as heritage, replete with material markers and intangible performances. These heritages of death are personal, national and international. They are vernacular as well as official, sanctioned as well as alternative. This book brings together more than twenty international scholars to consider the heritage of death from spatial, political, religious, economic, cultural, aesthetic and emotive aspects. It showcases different attitudes and phases of death and their relationship to heritage through ethnographically informed case studies to illustrate both general patterns and local and national variations. Through analyses of material expressions and social practices of grief, mourning and remembrance, this book shows not only what death means in contemporary societies, but also how individuals, groups and nations act towards death.


Death Tourism

Death Tourism

Author: Brigitte Sion

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780857421074

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Papers presented at the Conference 'Death/Dark/Thanatourism' at New York University in April 2010.


Society and Death in Ancient Egypt

Society and Death in Ancient Egypt

Author: Janet E. Richards

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-03-07

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9780521840330

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Janet Richards considers social stratification in Middle Kingdom Egypt, exploring the assumption that a 'middle class' arose during this period. By focusing on the entire range of mortuary behavior, she shows how Middle Kingdom Egyptian practices and landscapes relating to death reveal information about the living society.


Staging Death

Staging Death

Author: Anastasia Dakouri-Hild

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-12-19

Total Pages: 634

ISBN-13: 3110479192

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Places are social, lived, ideational landscapes constructed by people as they inhabit their natural and built environment. An ‘archaeology of place’ attempts to move beyond the understanding of the landscape as inert background or static fossil of human behaviour. From a specifically mortuary perspective, this approach entails a focus on the inherently mutable, transient and performative qualities of 'deathscapes': how they are remembered, obliterated, forgotten, reworked, or revisited over time. Despite latent interest in this line of enquiry, few studies have explored the topic explicitly in Aegean archaeology. This book aims to identify ways in which to think about the deathscape as a cross between landscapes, tombs, bodies, and identities, supplementing and expanding upon well explored themes in the field (e.g. tombs as vehicles for the legitimization of power; funerary landscapes as arenas of social and political competition). The volume recasts a wealth of knowledge about Aegean mortuary cultures against a theoretical background, bringing the field up to date with recent developments in the archaeology of place.


Sacred Worlds

Sacred Worlds

Author: Chris Park

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-11-01

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 113487734X

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This book, the first in the field for two decades, looks at the relationships between geography and religion. It represents a synthesis of research by geographers of many countries, mainly since the 1960s. No previous book has tackled this emerging field from such a broad, interdisciplinary perspective, and never before have such a variety of detailed case studies been pulled together in so comparative or illuminating a way. Examples and case studies have been drawn from all the major world religions and from all continents from both a historical and contemporary perspective. Major themes covered in the book include the distribution of religion and the processes by which religion and religious ideas spread through space and time. Some of the important links between religion and population are also explored. A great deal of attention is focused on the visible manifestations of religion on the cultural landscape, including landscapes of worship and of death, and the whole field of sacred space and religious pilgrimage.


The Luminous Landscape of the Afterlife

The Luminous Landscape of the Afterlife

Author: Matthew McKay

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-06-01

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 164411285X

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• Reveals the afterlife as a fluid realm of imagination and invention, a luminous landscape created entirely of consciousness • Explains how to navigate the early stages of the afterlife, how we learn and grow in the spirit world, and how to release anxiety about the end of life • Includes exercises and meditations to prepare you for navigating and communicating in spirit There is no better source of information on death and the afterlife than someone who has died and lives in spirit. Channeling his late son, Jordan, psychologist Matthew McKay offers a postdeath guide for the living, revealing in vivid detail what to expect when we die and how to prepare for the wonders of the afterlife. Specifically describing the transition experience and the early stages of the afterlife, including how to navigate each stage, Jordan shows how death is a fluid realm of imagination and invention, a luminous landscape created entirely of consciousness. He explains how a soul that has newly crossed over is an amnesiac, arriving without senses, a nervous system, and all that has anchored us to the world. Jordan details how to navigate without a body, how we learn and grow in the spirit world, and how to release anxiety about the end of life and instead view it as another stage of being. He shows that the inferno described by Dante is an optional nightmare caused by thought projections that overwhelm the newly transitioned soul, and he reveals that the bardos are where souls who are beset with fear and false beliefs spend time learning and recovering. Providing profound relief from the fear of death, as well as exercises to prepare you for navigating and communicating in spirit, Jordan’s message reveals how love is the bonding element that holds all of consciousness--and the afterlife--together. McKay also documents the unbreakable bond between the living and the dead and teaches the skill of channeling, allowing you to connect to loved ones who have passed.


Mortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya

Mortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya

Author: Andrew K. Scherer

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2015-11-15

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1477300511

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From the tombs of the elite to the graves of commoners, mortuary remains offer rich insights into Classic Maya society. In Mortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya: Rituals of Body and Soul, the anthropological archaeologist and bioarchaeologist Andrew K. Scherer explores the broad range of burial practices among the Maya of the Classic period (AD 250–900), integrating information gleaned from his own fieldwork with insights from the fields of iconography, epigraphy, and ethnography to illuminate this society’s rich funerary traditions. Scherer’s study of burials along the Usumacinta River at the Mexican-Guatemalan border and in the Central Petén region of Guatemala—areas that include Piedras Negras, El Kinel, Tecolote, El Zotz, and Yaxha—reveals commonalities and differences among royal, elite, and commoner mortuary practices. By analyzing skeletons containing dental and cranial modifications, as well as the adornments of interred bodies, Scherer probes Classic Maya conceptions of body, wellness, and the afterlife. Scherer also moves beyond the body to look at the spatial orientation of the burials and their integration into the architecture of Maya communities. Taking a unique interdisciplinary approach, the author examines how Classic Maya deathways can expand our understanding of this society’s beliefs and traditions, making Mortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya an important step forward in Mesoamerican archeology.